How to grade our teachers? Royal Oak agency releases its recommendations for teacher evaluations WITH VIDEO

A Royal Oak-based education advocacy
agency is releasing its own recommendations for teacher evaluations as
local districts and the Michigan Council for Educator Effectiveness
create new models to ensure children achieve in the classroom.

Based
on their findings, leaders at The Education Trust-Midwest, based in
Royal Oak, said their surveys have shown most districts do not have an
adequate model in use at this time.

While new state legislation
was approved in 2011 that required all Michigan districts to evaluate
teachers under a rating system that includes “ineffective,” “minimally
effective,” “effective” and “highly effective” as soon as their teacher
contracts expired, local districts had little time to develop the
evaluation tool.

Their teacher evaluation programs might be
temporary until the state model is provided by the Michigan Council for
Educator Effectiveness.

Any school district will be able to use the new state model, which will save the cost of creating its own.

But
some districts prefer their own model and will be allowed to use it as
long as it follows state standards to be handed down by the Michigan
Department of Education, said David Zeman, director of content and
communications.

In “Good for Teachers, Good for Students,” its
second report in a series on teacher evaluations, Education-Midwest has
released a new survey of 28 districts in various types of communities —
rural, urban, suburban, small and large.

Zeman
and Drew Jacobs, data and policy analyst, said this year’s sample and a
previous report indicate local school districts are struggling to come
up with a high-quality evaluation tool that will include observation and
provide feedback and support to teachers who are struggling.

Among their several recommendations
is that there should be directions on how to do an evaluation so each
teacher is evaluated under the same standards; that the evaluation be
more than a checklist; and that it provide feedback to the teacher and
support toward strengthening any weaknesses.

Also key in their
report is including student growth and results of the state’s
standardized testing in the evaluation model to gauge teachers’ impact
on student learning.

Only one Oakland County public school
district was among the agency’s list of 28 that Education-Midwest
contacted. That was Pontiac schools, which Education-Midwest said
provided no information for the study.

However, since the survey
was done earlier this year, Pontiac school district has completed its
new evaluation system created by administrators and teachers, said
Pontiac Superintendent Brian Dougherty. Even though it was put in place
this past year, it has been modified since.

Both Michigan Education Association President Aimee McKeever and Pontiac school Superintendent say it is a good one.

“The
one the district had last year was thrown together and no input was
taken from us,” McKeever explained. “The previous administration was not
as open to input from teachers as the current one (which has) “a better
attitude and better tone.

“We want an atmosphere that is truly
fair and reflects what we need to have so we have high-quality teachers.
That is our goal as well as the administrations.

“We certainly want to be evaluated,” McKeever said.

Dougherty
said one part of the evaluation program will be that teachers, on a
voluntary basis, will demonstrate teaching units that will be
video-taped for critique. Some will be provided for colleagues to watch
as a model for teaching a particular subject.

McKeever said the
videos might be given to parents or put on the local education channel
for parents to use as a tool in helping their children achieve.

Both the superintendent and the union president said they don’t want the evaluation to be a punitive one.

Dougherty
agrees with Zeman and Jacobs that evaluations must be done through
observation in the classroom to help identify areas where teachers excel
and need professional development.

However, he does not agree
that master teachers should be asked to observe in the classroom to
assist the principal. He doesn’t believe a teacher should be put in the
position of evaluating a colleague.

However, the superintendent
does believe that it is good to identify highly skilled teachers who can
model teaching skills via video for teachers who need additional
development.

Dougherty also agrees with the Education-Midwest
recommendations that good evaluations will give a district the
information needed to learn what the areas of weakness are in a building
or districtwide and provide professional development for that specific
need.

If an individual teacher is a preponderance of weakness, a plan of action will be provided.

Midwest’s
first report earlier this year, “Strengthening Michigan’s Teacher
Force,” focused on teacher effectiveness ratings in 10 state school
districts — two of them in Oakland County — that raised concerns among
agency leaders.

That report indicated almost all teachers were
deemed “effective” under their rating system, with few in the “minimally
effective” or “highly effective,” area. This means, Midwest said, that
school administrators might not be identifying struggling teachers and
giving them extra support.

Nor are the majority of districts
identifying the best teachers so they can be called on to be school
leaders, the report indicated.